Wittiness, Pluck and Range

The lingering flavor of dance in 2014 is bittersweet. It wasn’t much of a year for budding voices or surprising developments. What stays brightest in my memory are mainly instances of established artists delivering more of what they were already known for, several of them for the last time. Here are six highlights.

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From left, Jason Collins, Maggie Cloud, Melissa Toogood and Dylan Crossman at the Joyce in February.CreditAndrea Mohin/The New York Times

PAM TANOWITZ Ms. Tanowitz is the wittiest choreographer since Mark Morris. Or that’s what I felt under the vivifying influence of her program at the Joyce Theater in February. The tone is impersonal, formal, as modernist as the spiky music she prefers. The wit is in the steps and their sequencing, the unpredictable rhythms, the eccentric coordinations. The Mozartean complexity of the mirrored octet in her new “Heaven on One’s Head” produced a buzz that lasted for days.

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Julio Rocha, center, Miguel Fernandes, left, and Tiago Sousa in “Na Pista” at the Joyce Theater.CreditAndrea Mohin/The New York Times

COMPANHIA URBANA DE DANçA The best thing in the festival of Brazilian dance presented by the Joyce in February and March wasn’t a surprise. Companhia Urbana de Dança, from Rio, brought its signature work, the 2009 “ID: Entidades,” which reshapes hip-hop moves in wonderfully subtle ways. The newer, less original work sharing the program suggested that the signature might be singular, but miracles often are.

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Benjamin Behrends and Ashley Werhun at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.CreditNancy Palmieri for The New York Times

THE TREY MCINTYRE PROJECT At the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in June, the Trey McIntyre Project went out with a blast. Whatever broader and possibly dispiriting implications might be read into the disbanding of this successful, 10-year-old troupe, to see its crackerjack dancers tear into cleverly constructed choreography set to the greatest hits of Queen was to see champions fighting till the end.

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Chelsea Lynn Acree and Aaron Loux in “Acis and Galatea,” part of the Mostly Mozart festival at Lincoln Center.CreditAndrea Mohin/The New York Times

MARK MORRIS When Mr. Morris stages Baroque vocal works, he is principally competing against himself. His version of Handel’s “Acis and Galatea,” which had its New York debut during the Mostly Mozart Festival in August, isn’t quite on the level of his “Dido and Aeneas” or “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato,” but its artistry and charm would count as breakthroughs for almost any other choreographer.

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From left, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Joseph Gordon, Amar Ramasar and Tyler Angle.CreditAndrea Mohin/The New York Times

NEW YORK CITY BALLET At New York City Ballet this year, many young-lion choreographers were given a shot, and then Alexei Ratmansky reminded everyone why he is king. His take on Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” was many-sided in its originality. The hallmarks of musicality and warmth were there, but the mode was bewilderingly new.

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Jenifer Ringer and Amar Ramasar in Balanchine’s “Union Jack,” in Ms. Ringer’s farewell.CreditPaula Lobo for The New York Times

SAYING ADIEU The newness was comforting amid the sense of loss, as a string of distinctive ballerinas retired from City Ballet. Jenifer Ringer and Wendy Whelan, in particular, were company pillars during shaky decades. Their farewell performances succeeded in demonstrating why they will be missed.